My Mother the Ganja Dealer

Two kilos of marijuana mailed to a newborn baby ignited my hippy mom’s quarter-century career as a pot dealer—and launched a family legend that was almost too good to believe.

Illustration by Sophie Butcher

“MAIL CONTAINS DRUG, YOUNG WOMEN SEIZED” reads an August 22, 1969 headline in the Milwaukee Journal. Below, in grainy black and white, floats Meridy Domnitz’s mug shot. At twenty, my mother looks more pathetic than criminal. Her frizzy hair has gone renegade from a sideways ponytail and she wears what appears to be a paisley kurta.